The Era Of Rich Estates, 1881–1965

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2@The Era ofRich Estates,1881–196536Three significant events during the period 1881 to 1965 dramatically shaped Cumberland Island. The first was thepurchase of land on the island by Thomas Carnegie and his wife Lucy. Thesecond was Lucy Carnegie’s death in 1916 and the implementation of a complex trust arrangement designed to keep the island available for her heirs’enjoyment. The trust made it very difficult to sell or subdivide before thedeath of all nine of her children. The third was the death of that last child,Florence Carnegie Perkins, in 1962, which ended the trust’s restrictions andled to the division of the island in 1965. Thereafter, Lucy’s grandchildren andtheir heirs were free to dispose of their portions as they saw fit. During theperiods between these three events, the Carnegie family developed the island, built a substantial infrastructure that included five mansions, andthen suffered the erosion of both the infrastructure and their lifestyle withthe decline of the trust’s assets. Despite this long and worrisome economicslide, each generation of heirs lived at least part of their lives on Cumberland Island and developed traditions, relationships, and a deep love of placethat has carried through to the present.At the same time the Candler family of Atlanta, whose fortune camefrom Coca-Cola, acquired most of the northern tenth of the island, whichhad suffered its own economic roller-coaster ride with concomitant ownership changes. Ultimately, they transformed it into a substantial vacation estate. In the process the Candlers too fell under the spell of Cumberland Island’s mystical beauty and addictive lifestyle. They too became protective ofits resources and proprietary over its future. The combined ownership ofthe Carnegie and Candler families held the island in a relatively undisturbed state and made it possible for the National Park Service to considerit for a national park.

The Era of Rich Estates, 1881–1965The Carnegies Come to Cumberland IslandAt the conclusion of the Civil War, the South became a source of fascination to people from the North, especially the wealthy who could afford aleisurely tour of its sights. The flow of tourists grew from small parties ofscientists such as William Bartram and social critics like Frederick LawOlmsted to include well-to-do businessmen, industrialists, and politicalfigures. Many of these visitors found the winter environment of the Southattractive and its land readily available for purchase. Popular second-homeand tourist destinations included Jekyll Island to the north and Amelia Island to the south of Cumberland Island.Among the visitors to the Georgia coast in 1880 were the future ownersof Dungeness, Thomas Carnegie, the younger brother of the famed steelmagnate Andrew Carnegie, and his wife, Lucy Coleman Carnegie. Thomashad been born in Dunfermline, Scotland, in 1843, eight years after hisbrother. Economic woes beset the family, and they migrated to Pennsylvania in 1848. William Carnegie, the boys’ father, died within a few years, leaving his wife Margaret to be supported by the teenaged Andrew. The olderson proved to have uncommon ability and relentless drive in the businessworld, eventually accumulating one of the largest fortunes in American history. With brother Thomas he founded Carnegie Brothers & Company, aconglomerate of iron and steel plants plus associated manufacturing and financial operations. Thomas was an excellent businessman himself, and Andrew relied on him heavily, especially during his increasingly frequent tripsabroad. The younger Carnegie knew the business well and was better likedby both their partners and their employees. Yet, Andrew was a harsh criticof his brother and sent frequent letters full of overly detailed and demeaning orders.1In 1866 Thomas married Lucy Coleman, the twenty-year-old daughterof a businessman and neighbor who supplied coal and coke to the Carnegiefactories. She was a popular young woman and, according to one heir, included Andrew Carnegie among her potential suitors. Thomas and Lucyhad nine children between 1867 and 1881. The six boys and three girls livedwith their parents in Pittsburgh at Andrew’s former home, which he hadgiven to the newlyweds as a wedding present.2When Thomas and Lucy visited Cumberland Island, they were probablyfamiliar with its reputation. Many northern tourists visiting Florida orcruising the channels between the Sea Islands and the mainland stopped to37

38The Era of Rich Estates, 1881–1965view the ruins of Catherine Greene’s Dungeness mansion. In addition, Lucyhad spent part of her childhood in a boarding school in nearby Fernandina,Florida. She may even have visited the island during that time. Furthermore, tradition claims that Lucy became fascinated with the island after sheread a well-known article on its history by Frederick A. Ober in Lippincott’sMonthly Magazine.3 After their visit to the island, Lucy resolved to buy theDungeness estate for a winter home and as much island land as possiblewith it. She convinced Thomas to pay whatever it took to secure the property.Negotiations with estate owner General W. G. M. Davis initially proveddifficult. The retired Confederate officer did not want to sell to a “Yankee.”However, the accidental death of his grandson soured the general on the island while intermediaries sent by Carnegie convinced him that the “Yankee” would care for the island. Davis sold his 1,891-acre holding to ThomasCarnegie on November 17, 1881, for 35,000. A year later Carnegie and business associate Leander Morris bought the adjacent 8,240-acre Stafford plantation, including its mansion, from the cotton baron’s heirs for 40,000. In1886 Lucy acquired Morris’s interest in the Stafford land for a little over 38,000. She would continue to add island lands to her estate through therest of her life, ultimately controlling the southern 90 percent of the island.4Shortly after his purchases on Cumberland Island, Thomas Carnegie retired from active business, although he remained on the board of CarnegieBrothers & Company. He planned to enjoy life and develop his new estateon Cumberland Island. Milton Meltzer, in his recent book on AndrewCarnegie, claims that the stress of working for his zealous and censoriousbrother had taken its toll on Thomas. He began drinking just before retirement and died in 1886 a few weeks before his mother. He was forty-three.His death left Lucy with nine children, an unfinished island retreat, and alarge fortune with which to support the family and continue developing theestate. She sold the family home in Pittsburgh and established her main residence at Cumberland Island while continuing summer trips to the Northin order to escape Georgia’s summer heat.5Before he died, Thomas spent lavishly to construct a suitable mansion onthe ruins of Catherine Greene’s Dungeness house. It was a relatively modest structure for a very wealthy man, subsequently described as “about 120by 56 feet, two stories high with an attic, and built in the Queen Anne andStick styles. A tower at the east end was 90 feet high. The outer walls consisted of a light-colored granite and the roof was covered with Vermont

The Era of Rich Estates, 1881–1965Fig. 2.1. The Dungeness mansion during the life of Lucy C. Carnegieslate.” Later, Lucy Carnegie employed the Boston architectural firm of Peabody and Stearns to enlarge the house. What resulted was a massive structure of 250 by 150 feet in an elegant Italianate style. It contained more thanfifty rooms (fig. 2.1).6Thomas also began shaping the larger landscape of the new estate beforehis death. He maintained the existing north-south road but developed elaborate driveways through adjacent forested lands. He kept the Tabby House,the Greene-Miller cemetery, and the Stafford house and farm but clearedaway most of the other ramshackle structures and debris. Thomas Carnegiealso tried to revitalize the various orchards on the island while widely distributing ornamental exotics to beautify his land.Lucy Carnegie proved no less ambitious in her plans for Cumberland Island. From 1890 through 1905, while she added to the Dungeness mansion,Lucy Carnegie also paid for a variety of other buildings to provide for thefamily’s every want. Ultimately, the area adjacent to the main house, whichcame to be known as the Dungeness complex, included more than twentybuildings plus assorted walls, decorations, and a pergola (a colonnadedwalkway). The most architecturally significant was a recreation and guest39

40The Era of Rich Estates, 1881–1965Fig. 2.2. The Recreation House at Dungeness was one of the architecturally significantstructures on the island as well as a favorite of the Carnegie family.house in the Queen Anne style erected around 1900. Lying just east of themansion, it held a heated pool, steam room, recreation room, squash court,and guest bedrooms (fig. 2.2). It became the traditional abode of severalCarnegie bachelor sons when they stayed on the island. The RecreationHouse was wood frame with cedar shingles and sported a variety of innovative architectural features.7In keeping with her desire to have a self-sustaining estate, Lucy Carnegiespared no expense in building and staffing an elaborate residential plantation. The upper terrace of the original garden maintained its basic form andpurpose, that of a scenic ornamental display (fig. 2.3). However, she had thelower garden expanded by diking and filling more marshland and converted it to a subsistence garden of vegetables and fruit. It also boasted acomplex of greenhouses, primarily for cut flowers, and a waste dump at theedge of the marsh, carefully screened from the house. To the northeast ofthe mansion, Lucy continued to cultivate the olive orchard that came with

The Era of Rich Estates, 1881–1965the property until a frost killed the trees in 1895. Still farther east, near thedunes, was a fenced dairy pasture. The estate also raised poultry, beef cattle,and pigs plus assorted crops on the developed fields of the old Dungenessand Stafford plantations. Some of the latter were cash crops including seaisland cotton that won a state fair award in 1895. Still, the estate requireddaily runs of its boats to the mainland in order to supply the elaboratelifestyle of the Carnegies and their guests.8Lucy Carnegie employed a staff of more than 200 who lived and workedon the island. Thus the estate ultimately included a variety of other buildings. There were separate dormitories for white and black laborers, a dairymanager’s house, a poultry manager’s house, a boat captain’s house, and amodest residence named The Grange that served as home for estate manager William Page and his wife. Functional buildings included a large carriage house and stable, a kitchen-dining building, an icehouse, a watertower and cisterns, a pump house, a woodworking shop, a smokehouse, alaundry building, greenhouses, a large garden shed, and a boathouse nearthe Dungeness Dock (map 2.1). All together the work buildings and gardensof the “village” consumed some 250 acres.9The beauty of Cumberland Island and the lavish lifestyle of the Carne-Fig. 2.3. This photo shows the Recreation House and a portion of the estate gardens in theearly twentieth century.41

Structures in the Dungeness Area1.23.4.5.6.Dungeness DockCisternIce house (boat house)Captain’s houseCarnegie cemeteryCarnegie house ruins(big house)7. Tabby House8. Pergola9. Garden house10. Greenhouse11. Water wheel12. Pool house/Bachelor apartments13. Manager’s house14. Little dock15. Carriage house16. Gas pump17. Miller-Shaw cemetery18. Kennel19. Dairy barn20.Feed barn21. Lumber shed22. Carpenter shop23. Chimney forcarpenter shop24. Silo25. Quarters for black malehelp26. Commissary27. Dairy manager’s house28. Quarters for white malehelp29. Ice plant30. Steam laundry(restrooms)31. Recreation hall32. Dining room for whitehelp33. Dining room for blackhelp34. Chimney for bakery35. Poultry manager’s house36. Chicken houses37. Nancy Carnegie’splayhouse38. House of T. & C. Carnegie(NPS ranger residence)39. Garden shed4o.Laundry for cottage41. UnknownMap 2.1. The Dungeness estate in 1916. (National Park Service, Southeast Region Office,2000, Draft Introduction to Planning Effort and Environmental Impact Statement, vol. 1,CINS Superintendent’s Office)

The Era of Rich Estates, 1881–1965Fig. 2.4. Lucy C. Carnegie (in black) and her nine children in front of the Dungenessmansiongies became a source of constant interest and envy to the mainland neighbors in poverty-stricken Camden County, Georgia. A who’s who of notablebusinessmen, led by Andrew Carnegie, various politicians, rich friends andassociates, and notable figures in the arts and sciences visited the estate.There they would relax at the mansion or recreation house, go picnicking atthe ocean beach, hunt, fish, and enjoy lavish parties. Various house servants, both white and black, ensured that every want was satisfied.10As her children matured, seven of them married (fig. 2.4). For each ofthese, Lucy provided a substantial wedding gift which most used to build ahome on the island. Oldest son William received the Stafford house and acash gift to help renovate it upon his marriage to Margaret Gertrude Ely. OnJanuary 5, 1900, a fire of unknown origin destroyed the antebellum mansion. A year later William built another house on the site and continued tocall it Stafford. The new place resembled the old one in form, a two-storystructure with a gable roof and an open porch across the front. However, itwas built to better resist fire and sported a white-painted stucco exterior un-43

44The Era of Rich Estates, 1881–1965like its predecessor. Various outbuildings stretched across the estate to thestanding chimneys at the site of the former slaves’ cabins. Subsequently,heirs of William’s brother Andrew II built a more modest home adjacent tothe ruins that is itself called The Chimneys. Next to The Chimneys lay oneof the larger fields of the old Stafford plantation, which William turned intoa nine-hole golf course. Later it became an airfield.11Daughter Margaret (called Retta) married wealthy scion Oliver G. Ricketson. Because she already had spent her wedding gift money, she usedher husband’s fortune to build a residence two miles north of Dungeness.This large two-story frame building, called Greyfield, passed to Margaret’sdaughter Lucy Ferguson. Her heirs now operate the only privately ownedmansion on the island as a popular and upscale inn. It too lies amid a variety of outbuildings, most of them family residences and employee quartersrather than functional structures. Subsequently, Lucy Ferguson had a second area of structures built on land she received after the division of the island. This complex, called Serendipity, also remains in private hands.12Thomas Carnegie II received a twenty-nine-room mansion called TheCottage upon his marriage. Unlike Stafford and Greyfield, this house layonly a few hundred feet west of the Dungeness mansion. This elaboratetwo-story home featured porches on three sides of the bottom story andtwo sides of the top one (fig. 2.5). Because of its location on the Dungenessestate, it required no outbuildings of its own, although young Thomas IIImaintained a zoo near the house for a period of time.13In the late 1940s the same Thomas III started a fire that completely destroyed the house. According to Mrs. Carter Carnegie, The Cottage was being closed anyway owing to the cost of its upkeep. During the winter of 1951–52, after the estate bulldozed or buried the remains, heirs built a modesthome in its place. In later years that home has served as the residence of thenational seashore’s superintendent or other Park Service personnel.14The remaining mansion, Plum Orchard, was second only to Dungenessin both size and magnificence. Lucy Carnegie ordered it built for her sonGeorge on the site of a former orchard. Peabody and Stearns, the same firmthat renovated Dungeness, designed the mansion. The occasion of this enterprise was George’s marriage to Margaret Thaw in 1898. Eight years laterthe Thaw name became a household word in America as a result of a sensational murder by Margaret’s brother Harry. Jealous that his young wife,Evelyn Nesbit Thaw, had been “kept” by the much older Stanford White afew years earlier, he accosted and shot dead the famous architect in front of

The Era of Rich Estates, 1881–1965Fig. 2.5. The Cottage, built for Thomas Morrison Carnegie Jr. and his family ca. 1901dozens of witnesses at Madison Square Garden. In the ensuing circusliketrial, Thaw’s mother spent much of her vast fortune securing him a verdictof insanity.15Despite the huge fortune she spent on son Harry, Mrs. Thaw had enoughleft to enable her daughter to enlarge Plum Orchard substantially in 1906.Adding a wing on either side of the house, Margaret Thaw Carnegie expanded it to a sprawling, 240-foot mansion with thirty principal rooms,twelve bathrooms and lavatories, and numerous smaller rooms (fig. 2.6). Asbefitted the second largest mansion, Plum Orchard had more than a dozenoutbuildings and a dock. George died childless in 1921, and his wife wandered off to Europe to marry a French count. George’s sister Nancy Carnegie Johnston then moved into the house, and her heirs maintained ituntil 1970.16In addition to these four major centers, the Dungeness-Cottage village,Greyfield, Stafford, and Plum Orchard, the Carnegies also erected other facilities to serve their needs and wants. Chief among them were several “duckhouses” located close to the dunes and the ocean beach. The earliest of thesecoastal houses was built in the 1880s, but it was abandoned by the 1920s be-45

46The Era of Rich Estates, 1881–1965Fig. 2.6. Plum Orchard mansion, built for George L. and Margaret Thaw Carnegie, dateunknowncause of poor location and general deterioration. A subsequent one builtacross the island from Plum Orchard around 1900 was used as a huntingcamp through the 1920s, but it was destroyed in the 1980s by a carelesscamper’s fire.17The Carnegie FamilyThe youngest of Thomas and Lucy Carnegie’s nine children was born thesame year they bought land on Cumberland Island (fig. 2.7). In chronological order they were William, Frank, Andrew, Margaret, Thomas, George,Florence, Coleman, and Nancy. Frank and Coleman never married whileWilliam and George married but did not have children. The remainingfive had families who would become the five branches to divide the islandand secure retained rights when it became a national seashore. AndrewCarnegie II had two daughters, Nancy who married James Stillman Rockefeller and Lucy who married Phineas S. Sprague, divorced him, and marriedJack Rice. Hence she became Lucy Carnegie Sprague Rice. One of herdaughters, Lucy Carnegie Sprague, married a man named Foster and laterbecame the matriarch of Stafford.Thomas M. Carnegie II (known as Morris) had two sons, Thomas III

Nancy RockefellerWilliamFrankJamesNancy CoppGeorgia RoseAndrewLucy C. S. RicePhineasLucy FosterOliver IIOliver IIIMary BullardMargaret SpragueLucy FergusonOliverThomas IIIAndrew IIIThomas IVHenryAndrew IIThomas M. CarnegieMargaret RicketsonLucy ColemanThomas IICarterGeorgeFlorence PerkinsColemanFrederick Jr. (d.1937)Margaret LaughlinColemanHeverMargaret WrightColeman JohnstonLucy GravesThomas JohnstonJohnstonMarius Jr.NancyFig. 2.7. A family tree of the Carnegies. This chart is not complete but shows all thechildren of Thomas and Lucy, all the grandchildren, and selected others who appear inthe text. The names of those who inherited portions of the island are in italic type.Janet(GoGo)

48The Era of Rich Estates, 1881–1965and Carter. This branch of the family, ironically the only one to continue theCarnegie name, suffered the worst financial decline, making retention oftheir portion of the island after the trust ended an unaffordable luxury.Margaret married Oliver Ricketson and had two children, Lucy, who married Robert Ferguson and became the do

riod 1881 to 1965 dramatically shaped Cumberland Island. The first was the . and built in the Queen Anne and Stick styles. A tower at the east end was 90 feet high. The outer walls con-sisted of a light-colored granite and the roof was covered with Vermont 38 The Era of Rich Estates, 1881–1965.

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